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Could a 'renegade' doctor save your life?

Ten years ago Jane Lively was a happy and successful mother of two young children. “I was a bit of a super mum,” she says, laughing, “always happy, always on the go with my children, always busy.” Then, almost overnight, something started to go drastically – and very mysteriously – wrong with her health.

“I was suddenly absolutely exhausted all of the time,” she says. “But I couldn’t sleep because of these huge adrenalin rushes that afterwards would leave me collapsed on the floor unable to get up. My children were two and three at the time and it was very scary, I felt like I was dying.”

Jane, 46, a former wardrobe mistress from Hereford, asked her GP to do some blood tests, but they all came back as normal. Her symptoms worsened but, apart from offering her beta blockers and antidepressants, her doctor said there was nothing he could do.

As the years slipped by Jane became convinced that there was something wrong with her thyroid, the gland in the neck that regulates metabolism. Her blood tests said not but, through internet research, Jane heard about a maverick doctor called Gordon Skinner, who was apparently successfully treating people for thyroid conditions in Moseley, Birmingham, even though their blood results said their thyroid hormone levels were within the “normal” range.